Pat Forde: ACC and SEC Scheduling

Transcript

00:00 With the coronavirus pandemic moving full speed ahead, we still don't know if

00:05 there will be a college football season, but we do know that each conference is

00:09 only looking out for itself. Joining me now for more on this is SI's national

00:14 writer Pat Forty. Pat, big move by the ACC on Wednesday, tweeting out it's 2020

00:20 football season. What does this news mean and how does it impact the other

00:24 conferences? Well, the big news for the ACC and really for everyone else, because

00:29 it does reverberate nationally, you know, for one thing they've got Notre Dame in

00:34 the fold, which is big, and Notre Dame's gonna play a full schedule, compete for a

00:38 league championship for the first time ever. They started playing football in

00:42 1887, but more than that, this league schedule leaves open after the 10 league

00:48 games, an open date against a non-conference opponent, but not, doesn't

00:54 name the non-conference opponent, and that throws the Onus Squarely on the SEC,

00:58 the Southeastern Conference, because there are several rivalry matchups

01:02 between those two leagues that the ACC would clearly like to keep, but can't

01:07 force that issue, so now it's up to the SEC to say, no, we don't want to play

01:12 those games, and that Ross Dellinger, my colleague today, reported that the SEC

01:17 athletic directors would like to just play a 10 conference game schedule, so

01:22 if you want to see Florida, Florida State, if you want to see Georgia, Georgia Tech,

01:26 Louisville, Kentucky, Clemson, South Carolina, the ACC would like to see it

01:30 too, and they were now putting the pressure on the SEC to say, are you

01:33 playing us or not? And that's hard for the SEC, because if they don't, that's a

01:39 lot of angry or upset fans in their ballpark, but I got to ask you, this is

01:44 not finalized, there's still a chance that the league presidents could propose

01:49 against this, what are your thoughts on the chances of this? Yeah, you know, this

01:53 will go to the SEC presidents, they could decide as soon as Thursday if they want

01:59 to add a non-conference game, and certainly that would be the game most of

02:03 those ACC opponents, but as of now, the athletic director recommendation is the

02:09 other way, is to go just with the conference games, they like, I think, the

02:13 flexibility of a 10-game schedule spread out over 12, 13, 14 weeks, if there are

02:18 going to be postponements or cancellations or other disruptions due

02:22 to the virus, and there might now be enough bad feeling on the part of the

02:26 SEC that they would say, forget you, ACC teams, we don't want to play at this

02:30 point, so a lot still to be determined out of the presidents meeting from the

02:34 SEC. A lot to be determined, like you said, and we'll continue to follow this

02:38 story. Pat, thank you so much for your insight, appreciate it. My pleasure, Caitlin.

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